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Thursday, 2 March 2017

After Series of Warnings Of Possible Scam, 3m Nigerians Lost N18b To MMM – NDIC

No less
than three million Nigerians lost about N18 billion to the Ponzi scheme,
popularly referred to as Mavrodi Mundial Movement (MMM), the Nigerian Deposit
Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has hinted.The
scheme since it announced new guidelines guiding its operations in Nigeria late
2016, has not recorded new investor while the already existing ones have not
been able to recoup their savings from money doublers.Speaking
at the 38th Kaduna International
Trade Fair yesterday, Managing Director of the Corporation, Alhaji Umaru
Ibrahim who made the shocking revelation said, frequent usage of virtual
currencies, such as Bitcoin, Ripples, Monero, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Onecoin as
currencies for medium of exchange are Internet-based transactions and are not
authorised by the CBN due to the risks involved in their operations.

Represented by the deputy director Corporate
Affairs, Alhaji Hadi Suleiman, he lamented that despite repeated warnings by
the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the corporation, Nigerians still involved
themselves in shady transaction adding that, anyone still involve in ponzi
scheme is on his own.With the advent of the cashless policy and the
subsequent licensing of mobile money operators (MMOs) by the CBN, he added
further that, NDIC has extended deposit insurance cover to the subscribers of
MMOs to the maximum limit of N500, 000 per subscriber per bank through its
Pass-Through Deposit Insurance Framework.He said, “the Phonzi scheme is the phenomenon of
illegal fund managers, popularly called “Wonder Banks” which have continued to
defraud unsuspecting members of the public of their hard earned money. This
phenomenon has been a concern because despite our repeated warnings over the
years, some members of the public have continued to fall victims of their
fraudulent practices.“We would like to reiterate the fact fact that
these fund managers are illegal as they are neither licences by the CBN to take
deposits from members of the public not are those who patronise them covered by
the NDIC deposit insurance scheme.”I want to also draw the attention of some
cooperative society which often go beyond their primary mandate by accepting
contributions from members as cooperative societies are only recognised to
mobilise savings from their members”, he added.While advising the general public on the dangers of
keeping large sums of money at home or in market shops, he encouraged them to
make use of banks around them noting that, there are 978 licences microfinance
Banks nationwide out if which seven are spread across Kaduna state which they
can comfortably patronised.